Deflection: bishop to a7
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The tactical motive
Deflection: force the defender to abandon its post.
Difficulty 2035 ShuffleRating — expert level — few solve it at first try.
White to move — find the best continuation
How to recognize this tactic
Deflection drags a defender away from its duty. Identify the enemy piece that guards a key square or mate, then force it to move — with a check, a capture or a threat it must answer — and strike where it no longer defends.
General method: before you move, list the forcing candidates — every check, every capture, every direct threat — and calculate those first. The solution to a tactic is almost always among them.
Position on the board
White: king g1, queen g3, rook b1, bishop e3 e6, pawn a2 f2 g2 c3 h3.
Black: king b8, queen c7, rook d8 h8, bishop a3, knight f6, pawn c6 a7 b7 g7 h7.
10 white and 11 black pieces are on the board; the puzzle position arises after move 18.
The position in numbers
Black are ahead by 5 points of material (25 against 30; pawn = 1, knight and bishop = 3, rook = 5, queen = 9) — the tactic has to convert or outweigh that.
The white king stands on g1, the black king on b8.
It is White to move on move 18, with 47 legal replies to weigh — only the line that keeps the advantage solves the puzzle.
White keeps 5 pawns, Black 5. Files fully open (no pawns of either colour): d, e — natural highways for the rooks and queen. Half-open for White: b.
White hold the bishop pair, an edge in open lines. The White king has 3 empty squares to step to right now — the fewer they are, the closer a mating net.
Solution & explanation
Main line
18. Bxa7+ Kxa7 19. Qxc7 Rd1+ 20. Rxd1
Why it works
- Great move! bishop to a7 keeps the pressure (+8.3).
- Well found: queen to c7 (+8.3).
- Strong! rook to d1 is the sharp choice (+8.6).
- You win a piece — the queen.
- If instead Kxa7, then Qxc7 and you win the queen.
Move by move
- 18. Bxa7+ — bishop to a7 (capture) with check
- Kxa7 — king to a7 (capture)
- 19. Qxc7 — queen to c7 (capture)
- Rd1+ — rook to d1 with check
- 20. Rxd1 — rook to d1 (capture)
Types in this puzzle
Absolute pin
A piece is pinned against its king — it cannot legally move.
An absolute pin freezes a piece on the line between its own king and your long-range attacker: moving it is simply illegal. The pattern is three units on one straight line — your bishop, rook or queen, an enemy piece, and the enemy king behind it. A pinned piece neither attacks nor defends anything: treat it as if it were off the board. Pile up on it, ideally with a pawn, because running away is against the rules.
Deflection
Force the defender away from its duty — then strike what it guarded.
Deflection forces the guard to leave its post: a sacrifice or exchange drags it away from the piece or square it protects. First find the critical defender — the piece whose absence makes the mate or the material win possible. Then find the move it cannot ignore, which is usually a capture. Do not be stingy: if removing the guard wins the queen or mates, the sacrifice pays for itself many times over.
Overload
One defender guards two things — it cannot do both jobs.
Overloading exploits a defender with two jobs at once — guarding a piece and covering a mating square, for instance. It cannot do both: your first strike forces it to handle one duty and abandon the other. Find the overworked piece by asking what happens to each of its charges if it gets distracted. Then hit one target and collect the other — an overloaded defender only pretends to defend.
Provenance
Derived from the Lichess puzzle database (CC0).
Pack 014
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